'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Dr. Grace is mad and has to think quickly on his feet.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 153

News for the Bandit, too!

And I got fan art featuring both Kat and Kleya! I especially love the shoes. Check it out in the fan art section, at the bottom.

39 Comments

So, the president of TENka is also looking for Kleya — or so we’re assuming — as well?

If so, and if he’s paying any attention, I think he’s already suspicious. I have a feeling we’ll be meeting him before too long…..

With mention of ‘too many resources to operate the safe room’ I have a feeling the president is somehow disconnected from the rest of the world. Perhaps he is in cryo suspension or something.

I recall some talk about taking over someone else’s avatar. Maybe that sort of thing is why they need a safe room when they contact the president.

Also, president of what? TENka? The World? Is there a difference?

You are right, Bandits expression in panel five is hilarious. His inner pain makes me smile.

DR. Grace, I mean. Man, I need to learn to spell check my comments.

I will never get used to how shiny his head is… It looks like he has two different parts of hair- one orange, one gray

I wonder if all avatars on LIFE teleport head-first so they can come in talking. o_O

If I remember correctly, this is just the sort of action that will get Dr. Grace the respect he deserves from fans. Transforming him from just some guy, into a fast thinking smart guy.

Heck Yea! <3 Dr. Grace! He's Soooo cool.

Why do I have a feeling these people aren’t as bad as they are putting off to be and are actually trying to find Kleya to -help- her rather than catch/harm her? O.o Then again, they could also be worried about alerting someone that is out to/will help her. *Shrugs* XD

Hmmm… Maybe some of the bad guys aren’t so bad after all?…

Bah, so he only person in the whole of Second Life capable of beating Bandit is… her? There is, what? A billion+ users that use this virtual world? Arrogant much? How many fights of this type has he been in anyway? It’s not like there are no other people capable of making good specials either, they just happen to get recruited early on by these guys. Have they even tried to recruit her yet? I know she said she hates KENka but they haven’t really made the effort to get her on their side either, quite the opposite, in fact (if they were serious about recruiting programmers, they should have approached her when she took out the Twins instead of trying to punish her). If Bandit is so fantastic why is he only entering the hero game at this point anyway? It’s been around for awhile.

Hey, here is an alternative idea. Saisuke is such an awesome special user maybe he is the REAL Kleya they are looking for, only she’s pretending to be a man to keep them off her trail? Maybe if Kleya had pretended to be a man, she could have avoided all this suspicion. I know this comic is pretty G-rated but I assume that it IS possible for people to lie about their gender.

What even made them 100% certain that Kleya is making her own specials anyway? No one has actually seen her do it. Isn’t that a bit suspicious? Making a special for someone else that then does your bidding in return is a very practical way to go about this too, assuming you are trying to avoid attention, which Kleya keeps claiming she wants to do (while acting in a way that makes it impossible).

I’m sure these TENka people are right and Kleya is indeed the person they are looking for but man, they don’t really seem to consider many alternative ideas. Especially considering that their target managed to fake her death in a way that has been unable to be discovered (and I’m sure they tried hard to disprove it) and it’s been 2 YEARS since she “died”. Seems a bit long to continue this witch hunt to me.

1) Keep in mind that only ONE of these characters has jumped to that conclusion based on the fact that she won twice.

2) Bandit’s user is – by these characters’ own admissions – a brilliant programmer, and when you’re using a special, brilliant programming is how you win. The important thing is that Kleya has been beating him with specials that are programmed well enough that he can’t defend against them.

New theory: The reason specials became so overcomplicated was to narrow down the search for hackers to programmers with a great deal of skill: those who make good specials become suspects, and they watch them closely. They’ve taken such an interest in Kleya because they think she’s one SPECIFIC hacker who – from the sound of it – knows the system well enough to break it like a twig, which attacking the emotion stats apparently does.

Wow. *claps*

Excellent theory! If that was the case it would blow almost every objection I have out of the water, for sure (the exception being my wondering as to why they haven’t tried to recruit her yet like they usually do). I’m not sold on it yet but I am certainly willing to concede it as a possibility. Good thinking Tangible!

However, if that ISN’T the case.

1. I’m pretty sure 3 characters believe it’s her at this point. Dr. Grace, The Woman and Bandit. Why Bandit? Because he was the one that got her into the Tournament in the first place. He was told to do so and so it’s almost a certainty that the operative that helped confirm Kleya’s identity was him in disguise and after he left her, he clearly stated that he believed it was her. He’s covering for her just as Dr Grace is. I don’t know why in either case though.

2. I’m sure he is a brilliant programmer but you also have to KNOW how to fight. Kleya is a good example of someone that doesn’t. She always wins by hacking. That is how she beat the Twins and Bandit (fortunately her Hero Smiley covered it up). The only reason she won this time is because Bandit assumed the special was triggered by intent instead of her hand positioning. Even without active hacking, her passive hacking allows her to know how a person will attack her before they do so giving her an early warning system that makes her very hard to hit. Point is you can be a great programmer but still lose while playing the game you made and there is no proof that Kleya has done the programming either. It’s a possibility that they should look into.

1. My point is that ‘the woman’ is the only one who’s SOLE reason for believeing it’s the Hacker girl they’re after is that she beat the Bandit twice with specials. Bandit has worked with the Hacker girl personally, and said that ‘[it] was DEFINITELY her’ after he got a chance to see how she acted when there WEREN’T thousands watching her. Dr.Grace is covering for her because he wants to find the hacker girl first (I’ll admit I don’t know WHY he cares who finds her but we don’t have all the details of Kleya’s past hacker career and even if we did, people aren’t always rational) Bandit is covering for her because he doesn’t want Grace or TENka to find her for an unknown reason, but it’s been hinted that it’s because he loved/liked the hacker girl.

2. My apologies: that was supposed to be the WOMAN’S point, not mine, and like I said, people aren’t always rational. This woman decided Kat was hacker girl and, as is human nature, is going to grasp at everything she can to prove her right and ignore everything that could prove her wrong. The first time she grasped onto the fact that the special was unbeatable (as is the hacker girl’s style), now she’s latching onto the fact that BANDIT cannot beat her, signalling Bandit has stated that the hacker girl knew the game system inside and out – whether or not she built the game itself doesn’t matter, and neither does actual fighting when all you do is write a program that fights FOR you.

Specials are a pretty strong indication of programming skill. The fact that Kleya has beat bandit twice with a special indicates that she has better programming ability than Bandit, and perhaps this would indicate that it’s Kleya. But it’s a tenuous thread at best, and only really a thread at all because of Bandit’s previous fight with her.

Oh, and since Bandit has yet to be beaten (and it’s theorized that the system is being cheated in some way) it’s possible something is in place in the system that means ONLY Kleya could win.

New theory: Kleya can win easily because she designed the system in the first place. She knows all the exploits, and left a few backdoors.

Well well… sounds like dr. Grace has some plans and secrets of his own.

Multiple entangled plotlines & motives > linear single character perspective

I like.

So dear Doctor wants, whoever that girl is he is searching for, is not hunted by anyone else. Guess he will go for: the bandit needed to lose so they can analyze the special.

We don’t even know if she really is the girl he is looing for, maybe the are searching for her mother? Calling a grownup woman a girl might be wrong, but it happens.

After all these pages, we still don’t know much about the characters and their motivations.

We know Kleya is a hacker, wants to become a hero. Why a hero? What did she do to become a villain, hack to win a game?

We know bandit wants to help, uh, someone and uses his employment with tenka for that. Love? A promise to her mother (if Kleya is the girl)? Why does he call those mean KI Girls his girls and is he OK with them killing other players?

We know Dr. Grace wants to find mentioned someone for his own reasons and hide it form his boss as well. Why is he doing this? Power? Revenge? He could be Kleyas father and search for his daughter (yeah, far fetched).

We only know one thing for sure, be nice or get hammered…

Okay, there’s something you obviously missed from the early strips. Hackers are blamed for what happened to the world, so anyone who hacks the system is treated as an extremely high tier terrorist and threat to the world, no matter what they do with their talents.

I sort of assumed it was something to do with the way her mother died from the way Kleya was all sad after she beat Dani.

To Aneeka: Brilliant work! I’m pretty sure the art is improving! The characters seem really interesting with complicated emotions and motivations. I can’t wait to see where this goes!

Soooo, why is he covering for Bandit’s failure? This just keeps getting more and more interesting.

Ah yes. Sometimes the thing that saves the Hero is the Villains all concealing their knives from each other, waiting for the perfect backstab.

And here’s a comment regarding the Kickstarter project.

Just this morning I found out about a site called Kicktraq which keeps track of the trending fund for a Kickstarter project. Here’s a link to the page for ‘Not a Villain’ to keep an eye on how it is trending. I really hope we can keep this trend going as according to it we should make it, although it’s hardly 100% accurate so the amount we end with will be different from what it is estimating at present, I just hope we keep getting backers/pledge increases so the project does make it.

One thing though, ‘Not a Villain’ is not following a standard model, as normally the heaviest pledges are in the first few days and the last few days, with the middle seeing most of the low pledges. Instead Kleya seems to be seeing a rather mixed mess of pledges.

Heh, I’ve been watching that site since I first launched my project! lol.

Since you just found it, you probably don’t know about the little ‘easter egg’ gem. At the bottom left, you’ll see a pi symbol. If you click that, it’ll reveal an experimental graph showing predictions for the final amount. Of course, the calculating formula is based on the common standard model you mentioned, so who knows if it’ll be accurate but it’s sure fun to watch!

Oh, nice. I tend not to go looking around for strange hyper links to click on sites, I’ve found things that I’ve wished I hadn’t before.

I’m thinking Dr. Grace isn’t very happy with the president (is that like CEO of a company or an elected head of state, I don’t know) and would prefer to keep things under his own control instead, hence the blame-taking for the lost fight.

Also, I’m happy my previous prediction of us getting a scene change instead of seeing this conversation, was wrong. 😀

Boss man got your back Bandit. He’ll just chew you out one on one.

Just another retelling of Snow White story!

The president is a female, and of course like all females she gets jealous when someone is more popular than her.

The “hacker” became more popular, all the other programmers fell in love with her rather than the president. So the president destroyed the world and framed the hacker of course.

Everyone else is suspicious that the hacker didn’t really destroy the world, so are trying to find the hacker and find out what really happened and perhaps have a little romance on the side.

But only the president knows the hackers deepest, darkest secret… the hacker is really her ex-husband, and is only pretending to be a female. The president of course is really still in love with her ex and wishes to say sorry for blowing up the world and framing him and hopes they can make up and rule the world together, of course… ;P

That is a really odd retelling 🙂

Especially considering the President is a male.

Well, we still don’t know that it isn’t possible for a person to lie about their gender on L.i.F.e. so although as a collective whole it’s obviously false, but portions of it could be possible.

inb4 Kleya is the president’s daughter

Maybe it’s just me, but this is the first time I noticed that Dr. Grace has a ring of grey hair like a balding old man.

Combined with the fact that he doesn’t look old and has that hat/dome head, it’s kinda easy to miss (I think).

Am I alone in taking a while to notice that?

wow i love coming her twice a week to hear ppl give different hypothisis, i think it says something about NAV fans. We are a smart bunch who love the idea of ppl with differnt, if even shady, morales lol

Not sure if covering Bandit’s/his own @$$, or planned this all along…………..

SO MANY QUESTIONS!!

Kim is convinced Kleya is the mysterious hacker… and her first reaction is to protect the president?! So they expect the mysterious-hacker-who-is-probably-Kleya to be aggressive! Why do they think Kleya has a grudge against him? Perhaps he was the one to stand up against Kleya’s villainy? Maybe he’s the true villain and Kleya was just a pawn used to do his dirty work (like a Jason Bourne)?

Dr. Grace seems to be doing everything possible to make sure he and Bandit find the hacker first. Is he making a bid for power within Tenka? Perhaps he and Bandit are more sympathetic toward her than the president is?

This has to be the most intriguing page yet!

I’m guessing that he will say that it was because she is a promising special user, and he wants to make sure Bandit looks beatable. These are both valid reasons to allow her to win, even if they aren’t true, so it could throw them off of Kleya’s trail for a bit and keep others from becoming involved.

Since Bandit works for TENKA, it is probably good for him to lose sometimes in order to not give off the vibe that TENKA players are given special treatment that makes them unbeatable. Since TENKA is trying to show themselves to be a fair company that is just trying to help everybody have fun (and maybe espace reality), doing things like sometimes telling Bandit to lose can help with that image, where if Bandit was always winning, people could say that the game was designed to give them money without actually having to give up the big prizes.

Also, allowing a promising special user to rise in fame makes others think that maybe they can design their own specials, too. With more people trying to create specials, it is easier for TENKA to find more promising programmers to bring in (even if only 10% of people who design specials are actually any good at it). The more good programmers they have, the better they can make all aspects of LIFE.

Ok my current guess…
“The President” is Kleya’s father (or exboyfriend but I like the father thing better),something hapened between her and her mother that estranged her and made her rethink her hacking ways and they are all actually looking for Kleya’s because she’s the daughter but the Dr doesn’t want the father involved because he wants the power of controling her himself, gives him an advantage over the “president”. And bandit used to be a fellow hacker who’s in love with her and seeking her out because he wants to protecxt her so he’s playing the Dr. to get to her first.

Another option is that the dude in the “Game who’s searching for someone” Is the president and bandit. I know thatone’s not likely but you never know. And I can’t wait for the book so I can flip back and forth more easily.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 153